W.H. pledges action this month.

President Barack Obama will go for immigration reform and gun control this month, the White House tells the left-leaning Huffington Post. Obama’s actions will reportedly be done “quickly.”

“An Obama administration official said the president plans to push for immigration reform this January. The official, who spoke about legislative plans only on condition of anonymity, said that coming standoffs over deficit reduction are unlikely to drain momentum from other priorities. The White House plans to push forward quickly, not just on immigration reform but gun control laws as well,” reports the Huffington Post.

But I think, whatever our stance, we will all agree that there is no legitimate reason why Obama should keep secret his memo that authorized the killing of al-Awlaki. Why? Because the memo is setting a very troubling precedent for the U.S. government to assassinate any American citizen for any reason the government deems justified.

“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason….”

Outside the U.S. government, President Obama’s order to kill American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without due process has proved controversial, with experts in law and war reaching different conclusions. Inside the Obama Administration, however, disagreement was apparently absent, or so say anonymous sources quoted by the Washington Post. “The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials,” the newspaper reported. “The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi, the officials said.”

Isn’t that interesting? Months ago, the Obama Administration revealed that it would target al-Awlaki. It even managed to wriggle out of a lawsuit filed by his father to prevent the assassination. But the actual legal reasoning the Department of Justice used to authorize the strike? It’s secret. Classified. Information that the public isn’t permitted to read, mull over, or challenge.

Why? What justification can there be for President Obama and his lawyers to keep secret what they’re asserting is a matter of sound law? This isn’t a military secret. It isn’t an instance of protecting CIA field assets, or shielding a domestic vulnerability to terrorism from public view. This is an analysis of the power that the Constitution and Congress’ post September 11 authorization of military force gives the executive branch. This is a president exploiting official secrecy so that he can claim legal justification for his actions without having to expose his specific reasoning to scrutiny. As the Post put it, “The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Aulaqi, or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process.”

Obama hasn’t just set a new precedent about killing Americans without due process. He has done so in a way that deliberately shields from public view the precise nature of the important precedent he has set. It’s time for the president who promised to create “a White House that’s more transparent and accountable than anything we’ve seen before” to release the DOJ memo. As David Shipler writes, “The legal questions are far from clearcut, and the country needs to have this difficult discussion.” And then there’s the fact that “a good many Obama supporters thought that secret legal opinions by the Justice Department — rationalizing torture and domestic military arrests, for example — had gone out the door along with the Bush administration,” he adds. “But now comes a momentous change in policy with serious implications for the Constitution’s restraint on executive power, and Obama refuses to allow his lawyers’ arguments to be laid out on the table for the American public to examine.” What doesn’t he want to get out?

INDIANAPOLIS | Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

David said a person arrested following an unlawful entry by police still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system.

The court’s decision stems from a Vanderburgh County case in which police were called to investigate a husband and wife arguing outside their apartment. When the couple went back inside their apartment, the husband told police they were not needed and blocked the doorway so they could not enter. When an officer entered anyway, the husband shoved the officer against a wall. A second officer then used a stun gun on the husband and arrested him.

Professor Ivan Bodensteiner, of Valparaiso University School of Law, said the court’s decision is consistent with the idea of preventing violence. “It’s not surprising that they would say there’s no right to beat the hell out of the officer,” Bodensteiner said. “(The court is saying) we would rather opt on the side of saying if the police act wrongfully in entering your house your remedy is under law, to bring a civil action against the officer.”

Justice Robert Rucker, a Gary native, and Justice Brent Dickson, a Hobart native, dissented from the ruling, saying the court’s decision runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. “In my view the majority sweeps with far too broad a brush by essentially telling Indiana citizens that government agents may now enter their homes illegally — that is, without the necessity of a warrant, consent or exigent circumstances,” Rucker said. “I disagree.”

Rucker and Dickson suggested if the court had limited its permission for police entry to domestic violence situations they would have supported the ruling. But Dickson said, “The wholesale abrogation of the historic right of a person to reasonably resist unlawful police entry into his dwelling is unwarranted and unnecessarily broad.”

This is the second major Indiana Supreme Court ruling this week involving police entry into a home. On Tuesday, the court said police serving a warrant may enter a home without knocking if officers decide circumstances justify it. Prior to that ruling, police serving a warrant would have to obtain a judge’s permission to enter without knocking.

Barack Obama is ineligible to be President of the United States of America because he is NOT a natural born citizen.

Why?

Section 1, Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that only a “natural born citizen” can be President.

In 2008, when the Democrats raised the question of whether GOP presidential candidate Senator John McCain was a natural born citizen, the U.S. Senate looked into the matter and decided McCain is one.

On April 30, 2008, the Senate passed a resolution — that Obama himself had signed — to that effect, “Recognizing that John Sidney McCain, III, is a natural born citizen.” SR 511 states the following:

“Whereas the Constitution of the United States requires that, to be eligible for the Office of the President, a person must be a `natural born Citizen’ of the United States;

“Whereas the term `natural born Citizen’, as that term appears in Article II, Section 1, is not defined in the Constitution of the United States;

Whereas there is no evidence of the intention of the Framers or any Congress to limit the constitutional rights of children born to Americans serving in the military nor to prevent those children from serving as their country’s President;…

Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That John Sidney McCain, III, is a `natural born Citizen’ under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.”

In other words, the U.S. Senate defines “natural born citizen” as an individual who was born:

On American soil (which includes U.S. overseas military bases); and

Of parents who were American citizens at the time of the child’s birth.

By that definition, Obama is not a Natural Born Citizen — even if he produces definitive documentary proof he was born in Hawaii — because his father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., was a native Kenyan and a British colonial subject who gave his Kenyan citizenship to his son. In fact, by pro-Obama FactCheck.org’s own admission, Obama was a Kenyan citizen until his Kenyan citizenship expired on August 4, 1984 after he had reached adulthood.

A new scientific poll by Wenzel Strategies finds Americans across the political spectrum increasingly dubious about Obama’s birth eligbility to be president.

Wenzel is an independent public opinion research firm based in Ohio. From March 15-17, Wenzel conducted a nationwide telephone poll using a randomly selected sample of adults. The survey included 1,095 respondents and carries a confidence interval of 95% and a margin of error of +/- 2.93 percentage points.

32% say the lingering questions about Obama’s eligibility have no validity.

Just 9% said they believe Obama has met the requirements to prove he was born in the United States and is therefore qualified to be president.

4. A majority of Americans also want Obama to release his school records (from Punahou Kindergarten, Occidental College, Columbia University, Harvard Law School), which he continues to refuse to release:

Two-thirds of all respondents want those records released, with nearly 50% strongly favoring release and another 17% favoring release.

Huge majorities of both men and women agree with these state proposals, which are popular in every region of the nation.

The president of the poll firm, Wenzel, concludes:

“At a time when this country faces dramatic problems both here at home and around the world, it does harm to Obama’s credibility and undermines the confidence of the American people to have this question hanging out there. One can only imagine the storm of controversy that might ensue if we discover definitively after his presidency is over that he was not qualified to hold office. The resignation of Richard Nixon would pale by comparison in terms of undermining public confidence in government. The bottom line on these early-life records of Obama is that this issue lives on, regardless of how derisive some have been toward the so-called ‘birther’ movement. Obama supporters, particularly those in the national news media who have protected the president on this issue, have tried to ostracize those who still have doubts about Obama’s birth, but try as they might, they have done little to quell the questions in the minds of the American public. This issue is far from over.”

Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution says “The Congress,” not the President, “shall have the power to declare war.”

Yesterday, from his junket to South America, in Rio de Janeiro, Barack Barry Hussein Steven Dunham Soetoro Obama (he of the Connecticut Social Security number) ordered the U.S. military to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles at Libya.

In this video, at the 0:42 mark, MSNBC’s Chrissie “I-feel-a-thrill-up-my-leg” Matthews asks a constitutional question that noone in the media, the GOP, or Congress is asking:

With what special Constitutional authority does the President act here?